


Deadly Dreams

by camlowe3



Category: Doctor Who, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Once Upon a Time (TV), Sherlock (TV), Teen Wolf (TV), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, F/M, Marauders AU, Marauders' Era, Multi, Multiple Crossovers, Multiple Pairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-10
Updated: 2015-08-17
Packaged: 2018-03-29 23:49:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3915283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/camlowe3/pseuds/camlowe3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily Evans is on a routine mission for the Order that goes south fast thanks to an ex-ally. She soon finds herself facing new worlds, new characters, and new loves, only to be torn away or to have them torn away in the most brutal ways imaginable. She can't go on like this forever, but she has no idea how to break the cycle.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Impossible Tasks

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: the characters in this work are not my own, but the plots are.

It had been approximately two years and forty-eight days since Lily Evans had definitively ended her tumultuous friendship with Severus Snape. In that time, they’d completed their N.E.W.T.s, graduated from Hogwarts, and fallen in love.

Was it Severus’ fault that she’d fallen in love with the most arrogant man on the planet? Was it Severus’ fault that he had to hear whispers among the ranks of the Death Eaters of another pureblood planning to defile himself and his future line with the bad blood Lily would provide her offspring? Was it Severus’ fault that she had turned her back on their friendship at the end of their fifth year?

Potentially. But what did that matter now? The one accidental word he’d spit out in a moment of rage had become a more common part of his vocabulary over the past two years, thanks to the older Slytherins who had kept him company ever since. He’d made his choice to push further into the realm of magic he knew she hated. His feelings for her had never faded, but he had accepted that they could never be returned as long as their situation remained as it was.

He never thought he’d have to worry about Lily Evans again. He’d expected that his feelings for her would take a back seat to the Dark Arts he’d thrown himself into since that miserable day. He hadn’t anticipated his history with her to be tugged into the Dark Lord’s plans, and yet here he was, seated in the main hall across the table while his master discussed his strategy for the redheaded apple of Severus’ eye.

“I admit, she has proved herself a more worthy adversary than I anticipated. Her work with Dumbledore has cut our numbers down to unacceptable proportions,” the Dark Lord was saying, his cold gaze seeming to cut straight through Severus. “She is not worthy of our cause; I know this,” he said as he tapped his thin fingers against the table they sat at. “But I would be a fool not to recognize her competency.”

Severus said nothing and kept his own gaze on the table. He had nothing to contribute to this conversation that would be beneficial to the Dark Lord’s cause, though he had plenty to say about Lily in general. Yes, of course she was skilled. Of course she was putting a dent in their ranks and sending any Death Eater she encountered to Azkaban. She was bloody brilliant.

But these kinds of thoughts would be most unwelcome considering his current position. He had been shifting toward the coveted spot of the Dark Lord’s most trusted ally and he wasn’t about to do anything to risk that. This was where the art of Occlumency came in handy. The last thing he wanted his master to be able to do was read his thoughts enough to know how smitten he still was with a Muggle-born. He imagined the protective wall building around his thoughts of her, trapping them in and protecting them so nobody who practiced Legilimency could access them. He wouldn’t see her hurt because of the predicament his feelings placed him in.

“It will be a difficult transition, but I wish to recruit her, Severus.”

Severus’ gaze snapped up to the man and his eyes widened. “R-recruit, my lord?” He repeated, and barely managed to withhold the string of questions that popped into his head.

Of all people, why would a Muggle-born ever be allowed into the Death Eaters? What force could persuade Lily to join in the first place? Didn’t he realize that she would never be accepted here, no matter how skilled she was? Did he think she was foolish enough to join a group of people dedicated to eradicating her kind?

Then again, wasn’t Severus being that same kind of foolish? It seemed an impossible task, but it had been for him at one time as well. It had seemed an impossible task to win over the Pettigrew boy as well, and now he was playing double agent for the Death Eaters by gathering intel from the society he’d only recently joined. If they could convince Lily to do the same, they would be able to annihilate their opposition and complete their task uninterrupted. Better yet, if they could find a way to make this work, Lily would actually survive the war.

The man across the table held his silence for a few moments after Severus spoke, peering at his subordinate through slits for eyes. He folded his hands together and allowed the corner of his lips to turn upward in a smirk. He was shuffling through what he could of Severus’ mind, the boy could tell, and whatever thoughts he was finding there seemed to amuse him.

“Yes, Severus,” he spoke in the quiet hiss that was rapidly becoming characteristic for him. “I want her to join us. Potter, as well.”

The final comment was so unanticipated that Severus didn’t have time to school his face into a stoic expression before his emotions flashed across it. His eyes widened for a split second before his brows furrowed so low he could barely see, and his lips twisted into an ugly pucker as though he’d been forced to swallow something utterly unfit for consumption.

“Potter?” He repeated and inwardly berated himself for only being able to question the Dark Lord. That wasn’t his place. But Potter? “My lord, his blood may be pure but he would only be a hindrance.”

“He would be our catalyst to winning this battle.” Voldemort’s tone was cold. “If we are able to recruit him, we would be able to poach half their forces. He is their leader. You know this as well as I do, regardless of your disdain for the boy. They would crumble without him, and to get him, we need her.” He tilted his chin up and stared down his slightly flattened nose at Severus. “I expect you to find a way to make this happen. Soon. You will be rewarded, of course.”

Severus had expected as much, though he wasn’t sure how the Dark Lord would ever be able to make a task like this worth his while. He was asking for the impossible in switching Lily’s loyalties. In addition, he was asking Severus to drag James Potter over as well. He may as well have asked Severus to subject himself to the torment he’d endured during their school years for the rest of his life.

“Oh?” It was pathetic, but it was all Severus could manage without sounding skeptical.

Voldemort nodded, though he returned to his original position of looking down at Severus after. “We have already discussed Evans’ blood status. Naturally, she would not be allowed to marry and breed with a pureblood. Fortunate as it may be for you in this instance, you are not pureblood.”

Again, the implication caused a sudden swell of emotion to flicker across Severus’ face before he could stop it. His lips parted and he blinked a few times, vaguely wondering if he had something in his ears that had prevented him from hearing correctly. The task was his, then, and should he find a way to succeed, he would never have to worry about James Potter interfering in Lily’s life again.

“She would be mine?” He blurted.

“If you find a way to recruit them, yes. But, Severus,” he leaned across the table until he was barely six inches away from the boy’s face, “should you fail, she will be the one who pays.”

The warning had its intended effect. Severus, who had been sitting in an unhealthily rigid pose, dropped against the back of his chair. A soft exhale of disbelief escaped his lips as his mouth fell open again. Was the intended outcome worth what it might cost if he couldn’t complete the task? Failure would result in something even worse than his own death, he knew. But even with the risk, he knew that pulling this off would result in a life exactly as he’d always imagined it. He and Lily would survive. They would be happy together and in love with one another. They could have a family.

So his answer burst from his lips with the sort of confidence he’d only dreamed of acquiring before this day.

“I’ll do it.”


	2. Ambushed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape enlists the help of double agent Peter Pettigrew to set his plans in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D/c: I own nothing but the plot/content. Characters belong to their respective trademarks and copyrights.

Lily and James were no longer allowed on patrol together. It wasn’t as if they’d done anything wrong or inappropriate, because they took their work with the Order seriously. They knew the potential for harm they faced each time they walked the streets of Diagon Alley. The body count was spiking and for Lily in particular, the danger was ever-increasing. No, the problem wasn’t wanting to be with James in any other capacity. The problem was his bloody nobility.

James was one of the fortunate few in the Order’s ranks who didn’t have a price on his head. He was pureblood and in good standing. Unlike Sirius, James had never been forced to choose between his values or his family and so had never been branded a traitor by the pureblood supremacists. Of course, there was the issue of his chosen companion but until he actually married her, he would never face the same sort of persecution she was subjected to.

They had once hoped that their individual standings might even out in the eyes of their foes, so that if they were ambushed on patrol there would be an equal focus on James. That way, Lily wouldn’t be forced to endure the spellfire on her own. It was a good plan on paper, but it hadn’t aligned with the Death Eaters’ actions when the time came. It had only taken one instance of James hurling himself in front of a Cruciatus Curse meant for Lily for the redhead to put an end to their joint patrols. More than anything, she knew he would die to protect her and she never wanted to suffer the survivor’s guilt that would accompany such a scenario.

She patrolled mostly with Peter now. He was half-blood, so if they were to be attacked, the theory was that he’d be targeted almost as equally as she. She hated the idea of it but couldn’t argue with the logic. If the idea was for everyone to make it out of patrols alive, they couldn’t let the Death Eaters focus more heavily on one individual. That was the theory.

But their theories hadn’t been working out so well lately.

Peter was playing the part of double agent far more successfully than Severus expected. He had quickly proved useful thanks to the trust his friends in the Order had placed in him, and his quiet but overall likeable demeanor made him the last person one would suspect of playing traitor. Luckily for the Dark Lord’s cause, he was also malleable, nervous, and easily alienated from those friends. While Severus believed he cared deeply for Lily -- who among the Order didn’t?-- he also knew the boy would be easy to threaten into accomplishing the first part of an unsettling task.

“Pettigrew,” the ever-increasingly greasy boy called to the former Gryffindor when he next saw Peter scampering through Malfoy Manor.

Peter had been trying to escape the notice of anyone walking these halls, it seemed. Unless he was called upon, he didn’t interact with the others here. Severus didn’t care either way for he usually loathed the boy for his involvement in Potter’s pranks. 

But Severus hated Potter more than Pettigrew, so he would suffer the lesser of the two evils in order to bring down the other, his true nemesis. He only waited for the mousy, timid boy to look up before he dove into conversation. There was no reason to attempt the formalities of small talk.

“I have received a task for which I find you of use,” he said, staring down his crooked nose at the boy, much like the Dark Lord had done with him earlier. As a half-blood, Severus was subordinate to absolutely everyone here with the exception of this boy. There wasn’t much hope for a half-blood Gryffindor traitor to rise in rank. “You still go on patrols for the Order with Evans, yes?”

A mix of worry and anger flashed across Pettigrew’s face. Despite his reputation for being slow in school, Severus had to admit the boy possessed a remarkable wit and often came to nearly accurate conclusions before they were explained. This time, he jumped a step too far ahead of the intended course of action, though.

“I’m not going to hurt her,” Pettigrew asserted, his voice steadier than expected.

“Why would you think I want to hurt her?” Severus glared. “She was my best friend long before she was yours, Pettigrew. Despite the company we find ourselves in now, I would never allow harm to come to her. That’s why I need your help. The Dark Lord wants to recruit her, and that won’t happen if we can’t get her to headquarters.”

“You want me to kidnap her?! You’re mental!”

A low sigh whistled from between Severus’ clenched teeth. “Again, you make the wrong conclusions. I only need you to get her near Knockturn Alley on your next patrol and tell me when you’ll be there.”  
Pettigrew’s eyes darted around Severus’ face, trying, Severus suspected, to figure out the intentions behind the request.

“You mean she won’t be hurt? And the Order won’t suspect anything if I go back without her?”

“I assume you’ll be able to spin a likely story about an ambush,” Severus answered blandly. “When is your next patrol together?”

Pettigrew dropped his gaze and said, “Tomorrow night. Six o’clock.”

Severus’ mind raced with all the plans he needed to make before then. He would have to pull together a team capable of disarming the two Order members but who possessed enough restraint to keep from harming either of them. That would narrow down his potential candidates a great deal, considering most of them wanted Lily dead and not on their side. It wouldn’t be easy given the time constraints, but he could make it work. He had to.

“Excellent. I would start working on a cover story if I were you,” he said before spinning on his heel and walking away. 

Tomorrow, then.

\----

“Be careful.”

Lily fixed her boyfriend with a hard stare when he uttered his usual warning. “You know I will be,” she promised before breaking their locked gaze in order to stoop down and tie her tennis shoes in extra knots. “We’ve been through this before, yeah? There hasn’t been trouble in weeks.”

“Would you just let me come with you?” James had been trying to convince her all day. “I’d feel better knowing you’re safe.”

“James, no,” she insisted as she straightened up and met his gaze. “We’ve been through this. I may be safe, but you wouldn’t be. I’ve got a more level playing field with Pete, and he’s more than capable of holding his own. We’ll be fine.”

James gave a quiet whine and curled his fingers around her hips to draw her closer. “Fine,” he pouted and pressed a quick kiss to her lips. “Be careful,” he reminded anyway.

“What was that? Didn’t hear you the first ten times,” Lily joked, her green eyes sparkling. She returned his kiss and said, “I’ll see you in a few hours, yeah?” when she pulled away. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he returned and let her draw away from him. He looked to Peter. “You take good care of her, Wormtail.”

Peter’s smile was weary and drawn. “Always do, Prongs.”

\----

“Are you okay, Wormy?” Lily’s voice was quiet, but it still startled Peter as they walked through Diagon Alley together.

They’d been on patrol for half an hour now in the fading light and Lily’s words were the first spoken. Peter knew that was a problem in itself, because it meant she knew he was worried about something. He was a good liar and could hide his true intentions of the evening from her as easily as he could breathe, but there was only so long he could last without second guessing and rushing her home to safety.

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?” He asked, shoving his hands into his pockets where his wand was stowed.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m being paranoid. You seemed a little worn down when we were saying goodbye to James earlier. Everything okay with you two?”

So she had no idea how he intended to betray her within the next few minutes. She only thought he and James were having a row. Thank Merlin.

“Oh. Yeah. Think we’re all just a bit tired after the last moon,” he explained and glanced over briefly to give her a tight smile.

He hadn’t been getting much sleep as it was, but to spend the entire night out with the guys on top of everything else he was taking care of? Maybe it wasn’t as bad as he let on, but it would help his alibi if he acted like he wasn’t in good enough shape to be dueling Death Eaters. Surely the other Marauders couldn’t fault him for failing to keep Lily safe while he was so worn down from helping out another friend.

She gave a sympathetic smile and set a hand on his back. He almost yanked away from the touch because it was too kind for what he was about to do to her. How could he sell her out like this? She’d be safe; that was what he had to keep telling himself. Snape wouldn’t hurt her. He’d said so himself.

“You’ll all chipper up once you get some proper rest, I think. It’s not good of you all to be worrying about me like this, you know. Especially James,” she sighed and dropped her hand back to her side. “Not on top of everything else you’re all dealing with.”

“We’re in a war, Lil. What do you expect? Hard not to worry about you.”

“Bloody ridiculous, though. That you even have to worry about me,” she muttered, her gaze dark. “It’s not like I ever asked for magic. How stupid do you have to be to try to punish someone for something they can’t help having?”

“I know,” he frowned over at her. “Trust me, I understand more than most people.” He meant as a halfblood, of course, though there were other implications now that he acted as a Death Eater.

They had ambled toward the entrance to Knockturn Alley as they spoke, and Peter noticed Lily’s attention flickering to the dark corridor instead of sticking on the current conversation. That wasn’t a good sign, considering how easy it normally was to send her off into a tangent about how stupid the idea of blood purity was, but he couldn’t blame her for keeping a sharp eye out. If anything were to go wrong, it would be here.

And here it was. Peter sensed the movement just inside the alley a split second before his companion did. He’d been thinking up a cover story all day and finally decided the best one would be to throw himself into the fight alongside her and let the Death Eaters knock him out. Hopefully, they’d go easy on him.

“Lily, look out!” He shouted and threw himself forward as a jet of white light erupted from the alleyway. He shoved her to the side just in time to keep her from being hit. The spell collided with him instead, jerking him suddenly into the air by his ankle.

Lily caught herself against the brick entrance, pressing her palms flat against the wall. She drew her wand as she righted herself and spun back toward Peter, her wand pointed automatically in the direction of the attack. She took one look at the spell’s effects on Peter and snarled, “I know you’re here, Snape. You want me for something, come get me. Quit hiding, you bloody coward.”

It wasn’t her ex-best friend who emerged from the shadows, but a taller and sturdier figure with a wicked, yellowing smile. Peter’s heart nearly stopped at the sight. Of all people Snape could have chosen to help with the task, he’d selected the most lethal werewolf the Death Eaters had? What was he thinking?

Fenrir laughed as he advanced, his ghostly blue eyes locked on Lily like prey. “It’s not cowardice, sweetheart,” he growled, his steps steady even as the redhead adjusted her aim right between his eyes. “It’s called strategy.”

He lunged forward and a resounding crack tore from Lily’s wand. The nonverbal spell threw Fenrir back several feet, giving her enough time to free Peter.

“Pete, go!” She warned him and shot another spell at Fenrir to hold him back when he tried to get up.

Peter dropped to the cobblestone with a quiet groan, the blood rushing out of his head. It took him a second longer to recover than it normally might have. He heard Lily’s plea and his stomach clenched all over again. How could he do this to her? They were in too deep for him to do anything about it now, though. Even if he wanted to go back on the plan, he wasn’t foolish enough to take on Fenrir and whoever else Snape had brought along. But he shoved himself back to his feet like he was about to take off anyway, letting the Death Eaters take advantage of Lily’s distraction.

A furl of black smoke funneled between them and popped up behind Lily. Before it could even take corporeal form as Lucius Malfoy again, Lily had whirled around and shot another Expulso Curse at him. He was thrown back the same as Fenrir had been, but the obvious distraction gave Severus time to slip in behind her.

One arm coiled around her arms and waist, holding her in place with more force than Lily knew him to possess. His other hand clamped over her mouth and forced a small pill past her lips. She squirmed in his grip and tried to shout around his hand while using her tongue to push the pill back out. It cracked open the second it hit her tongue, though, and a potent Draught of Living Death leaked down her throat. As soon as she’d swallowed a portion of it, her body went slack. Severus nearly pitched forward in an effort to hold her up after she became dead weight in his hold.

“Take her,” he growled to Greyback when the werewolf caught up and transferred the girl over. Severus’ gaze drifted back to Peter, and he nodded while he caught his breath. “Well done.”

Without another word, the others Disapparated with their captive, leaving Peter alone to deliver the bad news to the Order.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/n: The next chapter will see Lily entering her first alternate reality, but how does she get there and which reality does she enter first? Leave a comment with your guess and/or preference!


	3. Star Spangled Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Snape's plan is set into motion and Lily wakes up in a foreign realm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D/c: These characters do not belong to me. The plots do. Enjoy!

“As often as I have to point this out to you, I feel it bears repeating. Severus, you are overcomplicating things,” Malfoy pointed out as he watched his younger comrade work. “We already have her. If the Dark Lord wanted to recruit her, why not just force her into it now that she’s here?”

Severus tried not to roll his eyes. Malfoy was a man to be respected, as both a pureblood and one of the Dark Lord’s favorite lap dogs, but he was thick. It would sound that easy to someone who had no personal stake in the matter.

“Several reasons,” he muttered as he flipped through a spellbook, glancing down at Lily from time to time.

He’d moved her to a more comfortable location as soon as they had arrived. It wouldn’t do to toss her into the dungeons when there was a chance she wouldn’t wake for several days. The length of her slumber depended on the curse he was going to use, but the point was to not let her go into a mock Rigamortis in the meantime. She would need to be at least physically functional when she woke, even if it would take time to build her back up mentally. For now, she was set up in the small room he’d taken at Malfoy Manor, tucked away in the bed Severus typically used.

“The Dark Lord wants Potter as well, for reasons I cannot fathom,” Severus explained after switching his gaze back to the book. “Potter won’t join if we’re forcing Lily to be here, so we have to make her want to be. The more involved she is in our cause by the time he finds her, the easier it will be to convince him to join us.”

Malfoy sensed the immediate flaw in the plan. “You think Potter’s nobility won’t get in the way? What if he tries to knock her out of it instead of coming quietly with us?”

Severus held up a hand to silence him for a moment before drawing his wand. He passed it over Lily’s head like a scanner, a warm orange light radiating from it. The light twisted into tendrils, which reached down to the girl and wormed their way into her ears, nostrils, and mouth. Her skin glowed and her veins seemed to twist with the spell as it entrenched itself within her mind. Only when the glow faded did Severus step back and look to Malfoy.

“Even if Potter attempts to convince her to leave, she won’t.”

“What makes you so certain?” Malfoy pressed.

Severus ground his teeth together and exhaled before answering. “I have confidence in my strategy, Malfoy, even if it doesn’t operate on your timetable.” Or within the scope of the man’s puny and uncreative mind. “She will move through several alternate dimensions, in which she will be faced with situations where she must choose either to die or to let someone die in her place. Thanks to the curse I used, the time in the realities she’s moving through works at a highly accelerated rate. She could live out years in one of these alternate universes and hardly a day would pass here, giving her plenty of time to form connections to those who would die in her place. 

“Once she dies, she begins the process again in a new reality. By the week’s end, she’ll have repeated the process enough times to force her psyche to collapse in on itself. Can you imagine someone who feels loss and love as deeply as she being thrown through so many variants of it? She’ll have almost no concept of morality when she wakes. From there? We can mold her into whatever we’d like.”

Malfoy quirked one eyebrow as he looked down at the girl, though he didn’t verbalize his doubt. It seemed an elaborate plan for a task that easily could have been completed with the Imperius curse, but who was he to question it? This wasn’t his task and he was glad for that, as letting a Mudblood join their ranks wasn’t his first choice. Still, to think she would ever do so willingly seemed a fool’s errand.

“So where is she now?” He inquired instead of letting his displeased inner monologue slip out.

Severus shook his head. “It hardly matters,” he answered. “We’ll leave her be for now,” he said as he stepped toward the door. “The spell will sustain her a while, so there’s nothing more to be done until she wakes.”

Malfoy didn’t need to be told twice to leave the room. He’d already stayed too long for his liking, so he strode out and let Severus close the door behind them, leaving Lily entirely to her new realities.

\---

Lily woke with what she sincerely hoped was a hangover. It couldn’t possibly have been a hangover because she didn’t drink on patrol days, but she had been hoping all the same. Her head was pounding like she’d knocked back a few firewhiskies, though she couldn’t have said why.

The first thing to catch her attention when she managed to force her eyes open was the lack of the sun. It wasn’t dark enough to be nighttime, but there was a distinct absence of the sunlight that should have been perched somewhere above her. All she saw at first glance was gray.

She shifted to sit up. A pang shot through her leg as she attempted to pull it closer to her torso, and she shot forward so she was nearly doubled over the appendage. Her breathing hitched, then came in short bursts as what felt like another white hot barb stabbed through her side. One arm wrapped around her stomach, her hand resting over the affected area. She felt a decent amount of dust on her clothing but no blood. It was only a stitch, then.

Her leg was a different matter entirely, and she knew it. As she managed to work out the stitch and control both her breathing and heart rate, the adrenaline began wearing off and the pain started to register. Something heavy was pinning it down, putting too much pressure on her shin. She didn’t dare look to see what it was for fear of seeing her leg half mangled but based on the uneven and jagged concrete she was sitting on, she had a feeling it was a large piece of rubble.

“Ma’am?”

The concerned and clearly not British voice barely broke through her own thoughts, which were racing as she tried to figure a way out of her predicament. Once it had, she looked up at the man who’d called out to her through eyes squinted in pain. They widened as they set on him.

She’d expected a police officer, given the nature of the wreckage she was beginning to process around her. What she saw instead was a masked man wearing a red, white, and blue spandex suit with a large star on the front of it. As if that weren’t garish enough, he was also carrying a shield of some sort with similar decorations as his suit, and wearing a blue mask that covered the upper half of his face. It for some reason displayed the letter A in the center of his forehead.

Lily was so caught off guard by his appearance that she missed his question the first time he asked it.

“Are you okay, ma’am?” He repeated as he reached her and knelt down, surveying her for damage. His eyes landed on her leg, to which he pointed. “I’m going to move this, okay? It’s probably not going to feel good.”

Lily made the mistake of allowing her gaze to follow his. Her stomach lurched as she set eyes on the Bludger-sized rock directly atop her shin. Her tibia was perfectly concave beneath it. She was quick to look away, managing a jerky nod of consent to the star-spangled man. A small cry tugged from her throat as the concrete block ground against her torn skin and cracked bone before it was lifted off of her and tossed to the side.

“I’m sorry,” the man said as he knelt beside her again and began to brush away the larger chunks of rock around her. “Here, let me help you up. There’s a paramedic tent right around the corner.”

She shook her head and blinked back the tears gathering in the corners of her eyes. “That’s not necessary. Thank you. I’ll be fine,” she said, though her voice was strained.

The declaration made the man at her side falter. “No offense, ma’am, but you don’t look fine.”

She shot him a look as mild annoyance flared through her chest. “Thank you,” she stated blandly. “I wasn’t aware.” She gritted her teeth together as she patted down her pockets and finally located her wand, which she drew after a cautious look toward him. “I meant I have it under control.” 

She knew performing magic in front of a Muggle was highly illegal but it seemed he wasn’t about to leave her in her current state, and she could barely tolerate the pain any longer. There was no way she could hobble around the corner to a medical tent and let this heal without magic. It would take time she simply didn’t have. Besides, she reminded herself, she wasn’t entirely sure he was a Muggle. If it turned out he was, she had a decent Memory Charm in her arsenal ready to be used.

“You might not want to watch,” she advised and drew in as deep a breath as she could manage before casting a silent spell to mend the bone. 

No sooner had the spell sparked from her wand and taken hold of her bone before she dropped the wand with another shout, this one much louder and more feral than the last. Mending bones was an unpleasant business to begin with, but letting magic piece them back together like this brought nothing but agony. It could have been minutes or hours before the waves of pain which threatened to knock her out finally faded to pins and needles prickling at her healed leg while the nerves repaired themselves. Only once the bone was whole and set back into place did she realize that an arm was wound around her, the man’s shield held in front of her as if he were protecting her.

“What’s going on?” She gritted out, thinking they must have fallen under fire while she was mending her injury. Why else would he be shielding her?

But he didn’t look worried about an attack. She realized after a long few moments of craning her neck to peek around the metal disc that they were no longer in danger. The sounds of battle had long since faded and all that remained were police sirens in the distance. 

She switched her gaze back to the man and tried not to grimace. He was staring at her with a slackened jaw, his eyes wide and glazed over. He was definitely a Muggle, albeit one who understood discretion if he had been using the shield to keep onlookers from noticing her use of magic.

“Ma’am.” There he went with that word again. “I think I know some people you need to meet.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/n: Hope you liked it! The next chapter may take some time to get up, as I have a weekend of traveling ahead of me.


	4. S.H.I.E.L.D.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily is introduced to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s new director and discovers that her reality isn't as real as she expected.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> D/c: I do not own any of the characters, just the plot.

The Strategic Homeland Intervention Enforcement and Logistics division was nothing like Lily expected it to be. Of course, she’d never heard of S.H.I.E.L.D. before, so she’d had no idea what to expect in the first place. Walking around this building, makeshift as the star-spangled man said it was after the recent infiltration and destruction of the home base in D.C., made Lily proud to be Muggle-born. To see the ingenuity of a people deemed useless by the Death Eaters was awe-inspiring.

For one, the space was massive and decorated with what she had to assume were the most modern of technologies. Being in the wizarding world for so long had certainly spoiled her, so much that the mere existence of the tiny yet fully functional phones people carried around in their pockets fascinated her. The advances Muggles had made in recent years were phenomenal, and the capabilities of the building they stood in were even more impressive.

Off to her left was a large monitor projecting moving images of a man in a suit to a small gathering of people. Lily had thought it was a television at first, familiar enough with that mode of technology to identify it. Steve, as her guide had finally introduced himself, explained it as video conference, though. According to him, it was a phone call in which both parties could see real-time images of each other. It seemed to operate a bit like those mirrors James and Sirius had.

To her right was some sort of replica of a prominent city (D.C., Lily supposed) set into the wall on a spinning display. A grid-like pattern slid over the model, flashing on and off every now and then so passersby could get an idea of the scale of the area. Lights shone on the walls to either side of the display, scrawling words there like a book being written with an invisible quill before her eyes. From the sentence or two she glanced at while walking by, she surmised the walls were explaining the history of the D.C. S.H.I.E.L.D. chapter.

"How does all of this run?” She asked as she strode along the expansive lobby with her guide, her once broken leg well out of her mind.

Steve glanced down at her and gave a grin, with perfectly straight and white teeth, she noted. “Electricity,” he answered as he brought a hand behind her and let it over just over the small of her back, guiding her along but respectful enough not to touch her. 

"I’d worked that bit out, thanks,” she said with a snort as they turned toward a set of doors in the wall near the end of the lobby. 

The doors seemed to be metal, so she couldn’t see through them until they slid open to reveal what looked at first to be a direct exit outside. Steve stepped through onto a tiled floor, and Lily realized it was a small glass box, perhaps only suited for up to ten people if they crowded together. She followed him in, her gaze stuck on the view of the city beyond the glass walls.

“Is this safe?”

“Of course it is,” he said as he reached past her to press a button marked Roof. “I get why you’d think it’s not, though. Trust me, though. You’re not going to fall out or anything,” he added and gave the glass a knock as the lift began to rise. “These walls are hard to break.”

She spared him only a glance before letting her eyes wander back to the city as it sank beneath them. “But not impossible. You sound like you’ve tested the theory.”

“Had to once,” he answered. “It was my only escape route.”

There had to be more to the story, but he didn’t expound and Lily was content to leave it be. She was sure they both had plenty of questions for one another. There would be plenty of time for them once they met with whomever Steve was taking her to. For now, she was more focused on the skyline as they surpassed it. When she returned home, she had to tell Arthur about all this.

“Can we see your house from here?” She didn’t know why she asked, other than the fact that it seemed to be what people usually asked at this kind of elevation. Once, when she was eight years old, a girl had asked her the same question while they rode the London Eye with their respective families, despite Lily’s house being nowhere near the London skyline.

“Yeah, actually,” Steve turned and stepped up next to her. He raised an arm to point off to their left. “See that skyscraper with the letter A on it?”

Lily’s gaze trailed to the building he was pointing at, and her eyes opened wide. “What? That’s where you live?” It was hard to tell as the elevator rose, but it looked nearly as tall as Gryffindor Tower.

“Sort of,” he nodded as he dropped his arm to his side. “I have my own place in case living with everyone is too much. There are at least twelve of us in the tower now but everyone cycles out for missions, so it’s hardly ever a full house. We’re not all there all the time.”

“Still. That looks like a huge space for twelve people,” she said.

“It is. We each have our own suites if we want them, but we pretty much stay on the same floor. We’re there for each other, not the amenities.”

“Of which I assume there are plenty,” she noted with a quick look to him. “I’m sorry-- can I ask what’s going on with the outfit?”

Steve glanced down at himself with a snort. “I guess it does look weird if you don’t know the history.” The elevator dinged as it lurched to a stop, cutting off what might have been an explanation. Instead, he returned her curious gaze with one of his own as he led her out. “But so does snapping a broken bone into place and healing it in two seconds.”

“Touche.” Lily’s expression puckered into a grimace. “Not the most comfortable thing I’ve ever done.”

“No kidding. Are you feeling okay, though? You look like you’re walking pretty well.”

Lily nodded. “It’s completely healed.” Her stomach was still twisting and trying to make her sick from the effort she’d expended upon her arrival here, but her leg was fully functional.

“Good.” The word seemed to hang between them as they walked through the top floor of the building, but Steve didn’t ask any further questions and Lily didn’t supply any explanations.

This floor was curiously designed. For one thing, why was it called the Roof level if the elevator had not taken them to the roof? By all logical counts, they should have been outside right now. The proper label would have been a number. The design of the place looked like someone had tried to make it seem like a roof, as all the walls were made of glass and Lily could see straight outside from any direction she looked, but it wasn’t the same. She maintained her stance on the proper labeling but chalked the mistake up to wishful thinking. After all, if one was stuck in an office all day, why not make it as close to the outdoors as possible?

Once again, Steve led her toward the back of the building and into a spacious office that occupied the span of the entire wall. It seemed altogether too large for the almost frail looking man sitting behind a lengthy L-shaped desk in the center; however, it did match the title of “Director,” which stood in prominent white letters on the glass door.

Lily quirked an eyebrow as Steve opened the door and ushered her in. The whole situation seemed altogether out of place, but who was she to judge? She’d attended a boarding school for witchcraft, after all.

“Director Coulson,” Steve greeted as he swung the glass door shut behind them and motioned for Lily to take a seat. “This is Lily Evans, one of the civilians recovered after the initial attack.”

“Ms. Evans, nice to meet you,” the Director smiled as he stood and held his hand out to her. “I am glad to see you made it out of that mess all right,” he added, waiting for her to shake his hand before he sat again.

Lily nodded as she took her seat. “As am I,” she agreed. “Although, I’m not sure I would be if it hadn’t been for the Captain here. He helped me out of a pretty tight spot.”

Coulson gave a close-mouthed smile which simultaneously pronounced the wrinkles on the sides of his face and made him appear somehow younger. “I’m not sure that’s true, with the abilities you seem to have,” he said. “It isn’t often we see healing abilities like that.”

Lily met his gaze in an attempt to determine whether he meant to harm her if she confessed to it or not. There were so many rules in place that it would be impossible to be forthright without serious consequence anyway, but on top of that, she had to be wary of her surroundings. This was foreign territory, and a government building no less. The last thing she needed was someone experimenting on her to test the limits of her powers.

“I know what you may be thinking,” Coulson continued before she could make an effort to defend herself. “And we’re not interested in turning you over to the cops or running tests. We’ve dealt with a lot stranger things than this before. All we really need to know is why you’re here.”

His continued smile made him seem so warm and genuine that it was hard not to believe him. But Lily had known some charismatic people who had gone all wrong, so her guard wasn’t down entirely yet. She decided to start with the vaguest story possible and see how it went from there.

"I was forced to go into hiding,” she explained, “and this was the first place I thought to come. I’d always wanted to visit this country.”

The answer surprised her, almost as though she’d premeditated coming here. That wasn’t possible, though. She’d woken up here, hadn’t she? In the middle of the street, covered in rubble. Before that, she couldn’t remember much. She had to admit, there was a possibility that she had wanted to visit before and simply couldn’t recall, but her brain was still trying to come up with additional possibilities. Perhaps this was its way of rationalizing the strange circumstances she found herself in, by creating a fictional backstory that seemed just plausible enough to trick her.

She held onto that idea, wanting to play with the fictional aspect of it later and explore what kind of consequences it had on her current reality.

Coulson’s eyebrows were rising, the smile fading from his lips in favor of a curious half frown. “You don’t look the criminal type, Ms. Evans.”

“Oh, no! I’m not,” she winced. “It’s kind of a long story but essentially there is a man back home who is sort of… well, he’s kind of like Hitler.”

Beside her, Steve stiffened. She made note to find out why later.

“Who is this man?” Coulson inquired, leaning forward on his desk.

Lily shook her head. “You wouldn’t have heard of him. The point is, I was born with certain abilities he doesn’t think I deserve to have because my pedigree isn’t up to snuff for him,” she rolled her eyes. “But it’s not like I can help it. I was born this way, yeah?” She was getting fired up at the thought of it now, infuriated at the idea of a war she never should have had to participate in. Her words were coming faster now as she added, “He thinks he’s the one who’s allowed to decide who has these abilities and who doesn’t, so he’s formulated an army. So my friends and mentors and I have been working with what I suppose he would see as a rebellion group, trying to stop him. But I’ve been vocal about the resistance and that’s made me a bit of a target. So the safest thing for me to do until we can figure out a plan of attack against him is to stay out of the country.”

She drew in a breath and sat back as if the explanation had physically exhausted her.

“So that is why I am here. I just need a place to lie low,” she added imploringly.

Coulson exchanged a glance with Steve, and the smile returned to his face once again. “Well, Ms. Evans, I think we could arrange that for you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/n: Thanks for reading along! I'll try to get another chapter up soon, but I start school next week and am not sure how much free time I'll have.


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